My Favourite Game Of All Time

Warning, This Post May Contain Spoilers!

“Do you remember what mum and dad said? Stay up too late and you will be carried away by the monsters.”

But of course Terry wanted to meet the monsters so the evil Warabou came and kidnapped his sister Milly (known as Milayou in this game) while she was sleeping. It’s a strange sensation to see a monster just pop out of your drawer, it certainly surprised me.

I then met another monster called Watabou who told me to come with him to the kingdom of GreatTree!

I jumped into the drawer with him and was greeted by a man wearing what could only be described by my logic as a ‘coaty fleece’ who told me that the king was waiting for me. I’d been inside the shrine of the starry night which I had never heard of. The man called himself the master monster tamer, I personally thought he was a bit vain really. I was very confused why anyone would even dream of building a kingdom inside a tree, obviously termites and woodworms didn’t exist in this strange land.

And then I met the king of GreatTree…

He wasn’t very helpful and all he seemed to care about was this starry night, what was he Vincent Van Gough or something? He didn’t seem all there either bless him. He told me that if I were to win the tournament of the starry night, then I would be granted a wish. I didn’t have any other options really, I’d always wanted to meet the monsters anyway and I was going to win this competition, that I was a dead certain about! I went upstairs to the monster farm excited to get my monsters from a man called Pulio, who’d let all the monsters escape apart from the previous king’s slime known as Slib.

The king slammed Pulio in the dungeon for letting all the monsters escape.

The king said that he’d release Pulio if I could “catch” Hale who had escaped behind what are described as the Traveller’s Gates. So I proceeded to these gates where I encountered many monsters including Dracky and Anteater and finally Hale the healer who looked very much like a jellyfish. “The farm is boring, I don’t wanna go back,” is what he said. After defeating Hale, he wished to join me on my quest. I of course accepted him into the party and Watabou took me back to the castle.

Pulio was freed and my journey began!

On returning to the castle I explained to the king that Hale wanted to stay with me. He understood and released Pulio. To become a monster master is a tricky task, I will have to compete in tournaments to get to open new gates with stronger monsters, I will have to tame monsters to like me, I will have to train them so they become stronger and I will breed them to make more powerful monsters.

So no prizes for guessing the game I’m afraid. I’ve owned this game for about 8 years now and maybe it’s a gameboy colour game from 1998, maybe the graphics aren’t as great as they are now and maybe the music does your head in if you listen to it for too long, but that doesn’t mean that’s it’s still not an epic game. In Germany everyone was so confused to how I could play this game for such a long time and not get bored with it and that’s because it’s my all time favourite game and nothing compares to it.

It’s Pretty Strategic

Every monster can learn up to eight skills that is dependent on the monster and its level. These skills are all really powerful and useful, although obviously some skills are better than others. When you battle with other monsters each monster is already set to the ‘Charge’ method. There are four methods you can choose from which are as follows.

Charge: Your monster will attack and use offensive skills.

Mixed: Your monster will use its supportive abilities to help it allies and hinder your opponents.

Cautious: Your monster will defend and use defensive and healing abilities.

Command: You can pick exactly what you want your monster to do, but this cannot be used in arena battles.

You can have a maximum of three monsters in your party which all battle as a sort of gang or a group against another group of monsters. The rest all go to the farm and await for you to pick them up.

You can’t catch monsters as such, rather tame them

When you tame a monster, it becomes your pal and will fight for you. There is a chance that monsters will become your pal without feeding them treats, but these are often weak monsters found behind the earlier traveller’s gates. The treats in order of tastiest to most foul are Sirloin, Rib, Pork Chop, Beef Jerky and Bad Meat. Of course there are some monsters that these treats have no effect on, although you won’t meet them until later on in the game.

“You can only gain certain monsters through breeding”

Breeding is key in this game, they emphasise that a lot throughout the game and even after the starry night tournament. Create the ultimate monster they say, well that’s more the master monster tamer if I’m honest, but they do emphasise it a hell of a lot! Through breeding you can get better stats and you can get higher level monsters, as they’ll have higher level limits and because they can reach higher levels they’ll have the potential to have better stats too. The skills of the parents get passed to the offspring and of course they’ll learn skills of their own too. Some monsters require lots of training before they become powerful, whereas some become powerful very quickly.

Watabou locked the monsters behind the Traveller’s Gates

This is from the gate of Labyrinth, although is not my party of monsters. You can see the traveller’s gate in the middle.

According to legends in the game Watabou locked the monsters behind the Traveller’s Gates so that they wouldn’t disturb humans. These gates are indicated by the spinning spirals that appear pretty much everywhere in the kingdom and not just inside the chamber of the traveller’s gates. I mean they appear in the arena, in the monster farm, the bazar, in some man’s house and there’s even one down the well of the local witchdoctor! After you defeat the monster behind the gate, it will no longer spin, but instead become a static spiral indicating that you have cleared that gate. When you’re behind these gates, there’s the potential to meet foreign masters (Masters from other kingdoms that are also in trees) which all do different things. For example one guy will heal you, one guy makes your monster stronger by giving them special medicine, one guy moves you through many mystic holes closer to the final floor of the traveller’s gate and the others just give you stuff.

It’s Rewarding And Challenging

It’s the clever mechanics like breeding that make this game so rewarding and at times it can get pretty challenging especially when you go without a healer or when your spells are blocked or when you’re faced with uber powerful monsters like evil lords. Breeding rare monsters can prove to be an even trickier challenge and you’ll really want some of the evil lords to join you, not that they will. Some monsters just won’t become your pal, but that’s their loss.

So yes my favourite game without a doubt has to be Dragon Warrior Monsters for the Gameboy colour. I’d like to see other games incorporate such story with strategy. I think square enix said that they were planning to make a remake in 2011 for the 3DS but that seems to have gone quiet now. Anyway I like the game as it is and think that a remake would probably spoil its appeal and they don’t make games like they used to after all in what other game do you get to jump into a drawer and get transported to the magical kingdom of GreatTree?

So what’s your favourite game and why? I’d love to know. Why not leave a comment below or maybe even write a post about it and I’ll talk about it in a future post. Also if you liked this post don’t forget to share it and if you want to see more like this post, then feel free to subscribe.